...for he is like a refiner's fire... and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier... and purge (me) as gold and silver, that (I) may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness. I must receive into the depths of my heart the searching scrutiny of God which removes the dross of selfishness, sin and judgement that I may praise His name forever.

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He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou find refuge: His truth is a shield and bucklerPsalms 91:4

Be it ours,when we cannot see the face of God, to trust under the shadow of His wings. C.H. Spugeon

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Hell; Tweeted and Defeated

*In the Epistles, sin = death and destruction, not eternal torment – Rom 1:32, 2:12, 6:23, 9:22 – no eternal torment +The death that sin = is an eternity in Hell, we all die once*Nor can we account for those who hear a ‘false’ Gospel, or who unknowingly have wrong beliefs or practices+Romans 1:20, "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, ..."Ephesians 4:8, " Therefore He says:“When He ascended on high,He led captivity captive,And gave gifts to men.”1 Peter 3:19, "by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison,..."*Eternal Hell is far worse than the worst human calamities: the Inquisition, the Holocaust, Soviet labor camps, etc+Yes, it is, Jesus described Hell as "... the fire that shall never be quenched - where 'Their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.' Jesus taught the literal reality of Hell, where the torment is horrible, fire is real, and punishment is eternal.*With a doctrine of eternal Hell we cannot really account for those born before Jesus*Eternal Hell cannot really account for those who never hear the Gospel, which is almost entirely an accident of birth+See above point

*This means that a vast number of people supposedly tormented in Hell were doomed at random+With knowledge comes responsibility and accountability, people have never rejected God for lack of evidence, but because they willfully refuse to believe.

*There is nothing in the mostly-apocryphal story of Satan to explain how he would become such an avid torturer+There seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding the role of Satan in this world, He is a fallen angel, the Father of Sin and Lies and will be subsequently punished in Hell like all those who reject God as Lord

*Jude 1:6-11 “everlasting” is defined as “until final judgement”; then sinners compared to animals who simply perish +2 Peter 2:4, "For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment;..." It should be more important to note that there exists no dignity or worth of creature which shall escape judgment based on the merits of birth or position*Jude continues 12-13 with imagery of emptiness, futility, twice dead, fruitlessness, etc. Not eternal torment +This whole passage is speaking about apostasy and hypocrisy by members and leaders of the Church and their ultimate spiritual judgment and its severity ..." The imagery is used to portray the life led and purported by these men. There judgment is imminent "... for whom is reserved the black of darkness forever."

*Jude 1:7 compares fate of sinners to Sodom and Gomorrah – no eternal torment, just destruction+Jude 1:7, "...as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Not sure what part of eternal is missed here???*Eternal Hell makes all of God’s talk of salvation in the OT into nonsense at best, lies at worst+What do we need salvation from if it is not justice and by inference Hell*Adam and Eve are not warned about Hell – seems like a big deal, and something they’d want to warn us about+Adam and Eve where given explicit instructions about the consequence of eating from the Tree of Life, Satan's first lie to mankind was when he promised Eve she 'would surely not die' in direct disobedience to God's promise 'in the day you eat thereof you shall die'*Neither Sheol, Tartarus, Gehenna, or Hades are the Hell of popular imagination and theology+Yes, because they are not based on the reality Hell*Jesus uses the example of the tower of Siloam in Luke 13:3-5 – the example is of perishing, not torment+Yes it is perishing, but the context of the passage is to refute the errant belief that death was a form of judgment by God in this life for sins committed or inherited. It was the belief of many and still has force today that sudden death or uncommon suffering were indications of divine displeasure of severe immorality.

*"Hel” in Norse mythology, presides over a realm of the same name, and receives a portion of the dead+That is Norse mythology, not a Biblical definition of Hell

*ConclusionWe’ve already said a lot. If we were convinced that the doctrine of eternal Hell was necessary to Christianity, or even strongly supported, then we would have to become misotheists. We cannot possibly worship a God who permits an eternal realm of torment to exist, and would actually have to do all we could to undermine belief in that God.Fortunately, the doctrine of Hell is merely an infection that has been spreading corruption throughout the Body of Christ for a long time. It is indefensible on ethical, theological or Biblical grounds, and it is time to lance the wound and heal.+It appears that the writers choose to continually take verses from the Bible out of context and by extension build thoughts and arguments fraught with deception and insinuations that are not supported by the whole of scripture. Revelation 6:8, "So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was death, and Hades(Hell) followed with him."Isaiah 14:9,10, “Hell from beneath is excited about you,To meet you at your coming;It stirs up the dead for you,All the chief ones of the earth;It has raised up from their thronesAll the kings of the nations.

They all shall speak and say to you:‘Have you also become as weak as we?Have you become like us?'

Hebrews 2:1-4, "Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will?"